In His Image eBook

I challenge the doctrine, now being taught, that we
must enter into a mad rivalry with the Old World in
the building of battleships—­the doctrine
that the only way to preserve peace is to get ready
for wars that ought never to come! It is a barbarous,
brutal, un-Christian doctrine—­the doctrine
of the darkness, not the doctrine of the dawn.

Nation after nation, when at the zenith of its power,
has proclaimed itself invincible because its army
could shake the earth with its tread and its ships
could fill the seas, but these nations are dead, and
we must build upon a different foundation if we would
avoid their fate.

Carlyle, in the closing chapters of his “French
Revolution,” says that thought is stronger than
artillery parks and at last moulds the world like
soft clay, and then he adds that back of thought is
love. Carlyle is right. Love is the greatest
power in the world. The nations that are dead
boasted that people bowed before their flag; let us
not be content until our flag represents sentiments
so high and holy that the oppressed of every land
will turn their faces toward that flag and thank God
that it stands for self-government and for the rights
of man.

The enlightened conscience of our nation should proclaim
as the country’s creed that “righteousness
exalteth a nation” and that justice is a nation’s
surest defense. If there ever was a nation it
is ours—­if there ever was a time it is
now—­to put God’s truth to a test.
With an ocean rolling on either side and a mountain
range along either coast that all the armies of the
world could never climb we ought not to be afraid
to trust in “the wisdom of doing right.”

Our government, conceived in liberty and purchased
with blood, can be preserved only by constant vigilance.
May we guard it as our children’s richest legacy,
for what shall it profit our nation if it shall gain
the whole world and lose “the spirit that prizes
liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands everywhere”?

VII

THREE PRICELESS GIFTS

The Bible differs from all other books in that it
never wears out. Other books are read and laid
aside, but the Bible is a constant companion.
No matter how often we read it or how familiar we
become with it, some new truth is likely to spring
out at us from its pages whenever we open it, or some
old truth will impress us as it never did before.
Every Christian can give illustrations of this.
Permit me to refer briefly to four. My first
religious address, “The Prince of Peace,”
was the outgrowth of a chance rereading of a passage
in Isaiah. This I have referred to in my lecture
entitled “His Government and Peace.”